Summary
Our intention to make VMworld the leading virtualization industry event means that our competitors will be present at the conference and will likely use it as a forum for their own product announcements.  This document will help you understand our key competitors and respond to questions from customers about them. We’ve also anticipated some possible announcements our competition may make at VMworld and we present some responses to use if asked about those announcements.
These are some of the VMworld 2006 exhibitors who compete with us to varying degrees:

•        Acronis
•        Altiris
•        Cassatt
•        Dunes
•        Leostream
•        Microsoft
•        moka5
•        PlateSpin
•        Surgient
•        Transitive
•        Virtual Iron
•        XenSource

Microsoft
Virtual Server 2005
Virtual Server 2005 is a free, hosted server virtualization product that runs on Windows host operating systems.  It is most similar to our VMware Server product, however VMware Server has a richer feature set and has been much more widely adopted with over 1.6 million customer downloads to date.
Strengths
•        Free product
•        Delivered by Microsoft’s huge population of resellers
•        Microsoft fully supports their OSes and applications in Virtual Server VMs, whereas they only offer “best efforts” support to customers with Premier support who run on VMware VMs
•        Integrated with Microsoft Operations Manager for basic management of VMs across multiple hosts
•        Very complete API
Weaknesses
•        An acknowledged dead-end product (the Viridian hypervisor is Microsoft’s future direction)
•        Requires purchase of a Microsoft host OS
•        No Linux guest support yet despite promises – Virtual Server Additions (like VMware Tools) for Linux are still in beta; VMware Server supports dozens of Windows, Linux and NetWare guests
•        No 64-bit guest support planned
•        Performance limitations of hosted architecture
•        No live migration – Microsoft promotes a clumsy “host clustering” method of migrating VMs based on Microsoft Cluster Services that is much more complicated to use than VMotion, DRS or HA
•        Extensive Windows administrator skills needed to use clustering and active directory
•        No virtual SMP
•        No USB support
•        No snapshots
•        Crude single-host web management interface; nothing equivalent to VirtualCenter
•        Positioned by Microsoft as adequate only for dev/test and light-duty consolidation
•        No available upgrade path to bare-metal hypervisor performance
Possible Announcements
•        General availability of Virtual Machine Additions (Tools) for Linux guests
•        Firm release date for Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (expected H1 2007)
VMware Messages
Virtual Server 2005 is a weak product Microsoft is using to lock in customers to prevent them from adopting VMware’s much more capable products.  Virtual Server should be compared to VMware Server, which is also free but has a richer feature set, better performance and any easy upgrade path to VI3.  Over 1.6 million users have enthusiastically adopted VMware Server and hundreds of partners have made it the platform for their solutions while Virtual Server has fewer users and a smaller ecosystem of partners.  Customers using Virtual Server typically find their deployments stalled with limited dev/test usage due to its performance and management shortcomings that prevent broader production adoption.  There’s no need for customers to wait for Microsoft to fix its limited virtualization offerings – the advanced 3rd generation features of VMware Infrastructure 3 and its bare-metal hypervisor performance let customers deploy production virtual infrastructure today rather than waiting two years for a 1st generation Microsoft product. The better performance and scalability of VI3 makes it cheaper per VM than Virtual Server, which requires more hardware and purchase of Windows Server 2003 host licenses.

Windows Server Virtualization (Viridian)
Microsoft has promised to deliver a true hypervisor virtualization product six months after release of their upcoming Longhorn server OS.  That means Microsoft customers will be waiting until mid-2008 for a product to replace Virtual Server.
Strengths
•        Promise of full Microsoft support for Windows guests and Microsoft apps will comfort some customers
•        Split (or indirect) driver model offers support for more devices
•        Perceived as free by Microsoft customers
Weaknesses
•        Microsoft’s lack of a competitive product is forcing it to sell its Viridian roadmap in an attempt to freeze VI3 adoption
•        Long wait for delivery (mid-2008) means customers defer savings from virtualization
•        Only a 1st generation hypervisor – no 3rd generation VI3 features like host clusters, resource pools, DRS, HA
•        Use of Windows in management partition creates reliability concerns
•        Requires all-new processors – only Intel VT and AMD-V processors are supported
•        Relies on generic drivers in management partition – an approach we abandoned in favor of optimized drivers in the hypervisor for better performance
•        Windows-centric architecture locks customers into dependence on Microsoft
•        Linux is a second-class citizen – Linux guests require 3rd-party hypervisor interface
•        Requires purchase of Microsoft Windows server license for host
•        Microsoft will always lag in adopting technologies that loosen the position of Windows as the foundation for all applications while VMware will enable the changing role of the operating system made possible b y virtualization
Possible Announcements
•        Viridian Beta availability (private beta expected Q4, public beta H1 2007)
•        Viridian Beta reference customers
VMware Messages
Even when Microsoft finally releases Windows Server Virtualization, it will still be just a 1st generation hypervisor with a single-node orientation and simple features.  VMware delivered its 1st generation ESX Server product in 2001 – seven years ahead of Microsoft’s expected release.  We now offer 3rd generation virtual infrastructure with the advanced host clustering features in VI3 like DRS and HA.  Our customers can enjoy the tremendous savings of virtual infrastructure today, instead of waiting for a lagging Version 1.0 Microsoft product.  Microsoft will also be locking customers in to a Windows platform with Viridian.  It will require paying for a Windows server license and Windows guests will receive preference.  Microsoft’s vested interest in keeping Windows on every server will delay their adoption of the move to ever thinner hypervisors and packaging of applications with tailored OSes in VM containers that VMware is enabling.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (Carmine)
As Microsoft’s answer to VirtualCenter, System Center Virtual Machine Manager entered beta in August 2006 and general release is expected in late 2007.  Microsoft has lagged badly in virtualization management tools.  Virtual Server 2005 has a clumsy, single-node web management interface.  The Virtual Server Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager offers only very simple monitoring and control.  Microsoft initially criticized VirtualCenter as adding an extra management tool layer, but they have obviously seen the need for virtualization-specific management tools and Carmine is their late response.  The Carmine beta supports Virtual Server 2005 management.  It will be the primary management interface for the future Windows Server Virtualization (Viridian) hypervisor.  Microsoft is positioning Carmine as simpler and cheaper than VirtualCenter.
Strengths
•        Multi-host, single pane of glass management of virtual infrastructure
•        Built-in assessment of consolidation candidates – ranks best servers to virtualize
•        Built-in agentless P2V tool
•        Maintains library of virtual disks, ISOs, templates
•        Self-service VM provisioning web  portal
Weaknesses
•        Expected to cost $400-600 per node
•        First release will only support Virtual Server 2005, no live migration
•        No host clustering or resource pools as in VI3
Possible Announcements
•        Beta 2 refresh with Viridian support
•        Virtual Server/Carmine reference customers
VMware Messages
System Center Virtual Machine Manager is yet another component of Microsoft’s virtualization roadmap that locks customers into a Windows-centric architecture controlled by Microsoft that gives preferential treatment to Windows guests.  As with Viridian, Carmine users will find themselves waiting for a product that only matches the capabilities VMware delivered years ago.  Customers can get all the capabilities Carmine promises and more by deploying VI3 today.

XenSource
XenSource is a VC-funded startup that is the primary commercial sponsor for the Xen open source hypervisor.  XenSource employees are coordinating Xen development and they act as its representatives in the industry.  XenSource also markets a commercial implementation of Xen together with a basic management interface called XenEnterprise.
XenEnterprise
XenSource released XenEnterprise 3.0 (their first release) in August.  XenEnterprise is priced at $375 per host socket and XenSource is aggressively trying to sell it against us on price and the promise of future improvements.  XenSource has attempted to recruit VMware resellers by offering better discounts and no competition from a direct sales force.
Strengths
•        Cheaper than VI3
•        Used by customers in price negotiations with VMware
•        Xen being backed by big players – HP, IBM, Red Hat, Novell/SUSE
•        Good performance with Linux guests
•        32-way virtual SMP, 32GB guest memory limits
•        Split/indirect driver model enables broad hardware support
•        Partnered with Microsoft to add Linux support to Viridian
Weaknesses
•        Very immature and buggy
•        Reliant on resellers for customer technical support
•        Requires modified (paravirtualized) Linux guests or Intel VT/AMD-V processors
•        Only supports RHEL 3/4 and SLES 9 Linux guests
•        No Windows guest support yet
•        Basic management tool
•        Crude storage support – lack of distributed file system exposes VMs to corruption when migrated
•        No reference customers
Possible Announcements
•        Release of XenEnterprise 3.1 with Windows guest support (Q1 2007 GA expected)
•        Bundled P2V tools
•        Agreements with resellers/distributors
•        First reference customers
VMware Messaging
Xen-based products like XenEnterprise have received much attention lately, but customers should take a closer look at the enterprise readiness of those products compared to proven VMware offerings.  XenEnterprise is really a version 1.0 release and serious maturity concerns exist with the Xen hypervisor it is based on.  There are no production reference customers for Xen or XenEnterprise (Amazon is still in limited beta with Enterprise Compute Cloud.)  XenEnterprise only supports a very limited set of Linux guests and unless the customer has servers with the latest Intel VT or AMD-V processors, only modified Linux guests can be used.  There is no Windows guest support yet.  Compare those limitations to VI3, which supports dozens of Windows, Linux and NetWare guests on both new and legacy x86 servers.  Xen performance with Linux guests is good, but it is available only if customers are willing to run non-standard Linux kernels in their VMs.  Another concern with Xen-based products is the divergence of Xen offerings from XenSource, Virtual Iron, Red Hat and SUSE. Xen users face a future of forked and incompatible Xen implementations that will lock in users and restrict virtual machine mobility.

Virtual Iron
Virtual Iron 3.0 (their first version) was released in October.  Virtual Iron is the most ambitious of the Xen-based commercial products with features copied extensively from VI3  In fact, Virtual Iron positions their product as the commercial alternative to VMware.  Virtual Iron 3.0 is available in three editions mirroring our VI3 Starter/Standard/Enterprise editions.  Their low-end edition is free and the prices of the other two are about half of ours. Virtual Iron is aggressively pursuing VMware channel partners with better discounts and no direct sales competition.  Virtual Iron is unique among the Xen vendors in declaring paravirtualization a dead-end technology and requiring Intel VT and AMD-V hardware assist.
Strengths
•        Rich feature set with host clustering – demos very well
•        Clones of our VMotion, DRS, HA features
•        Slick Java-based management client
•        Good Linux guest performance
•        Ability to boot diskless host nodes from the Virtual Iron Management Server
Weaknesses
•        Severely limited guest OS support – only RHEL 4 and SLES 9
•        No Windows guest support
•        Lack of distributed clustered file systems exposes VMs to disk corruption
•        Many scary failure modes disclosed in their release notes
•        Only runs on servers with Intel VT or AMD-V processors
•        They are doing their own patches to Xen to get it working; this is leading to multiple forked Xen implementations
•        Hobbled by reliance on the buggy Xen hypervisor
•        Small company (~50 employees) limits enterprise viability
•        All support delivered by resellers
•        No reference customers
Possible Announcements
•        Beta/GA release of Windows guest support
•        First reference customers
•        Agreements with resellers/distributors
•        Acquisition by larger company
VMware Messages
Virtual Iron has taken the approach of replicating as many VI3 features as possible on a Xen foundation.  It’s flattering to see how much they admire our accomplishments with VI3, but Virtual Iron is severely hobbled by their immature Xen foundation.  Their limited Linux guest support and missing Windows support is clearly due to Xen shortcomings.  Virtual Iron has stated they are patching Xen on their own and they’ve promised to submit those patches to the open source community, but we’re clearly seeing the first signs of forking in the Xen ecosystem, which should be very concerning to customers who risk their VMs getting locked to one vendor’s implementation.  Virtual Iron is also attempting to replicate the host clustering features of VI3 like DRS and HA, but without a true distributed cluster file system like our VMFS 3.  This is very risky as any incomplete live migration of a VM can result in unrecoverable file corruption and the Virtual Iron 3.0 release notes bear this out with several warnings, but no preventative measures are provided.  We agree with Virtual Iron’s position that Linux kernels modified to support paravirtualization will be rejected by most enterprise datacenters.  However, we think it’s unreasonable to force customers to upgrade all servers to new processors with virtualization hardware assist as an alternative to paravirtualization’s drawbacks.  Virtual Iron has set some ambitious goals, but their Xen underpinnings will be holding them back for some time.

SWsoft
SWsoft is headquartered in Herndon, VA with R&D operations in Moscow.  SWsoft is part of the S&W Group of Moscow, which also has controlling interest in Parallels and Acronis.  SWsoft has about 650 employees and annual revenue is about $40 million.  SWsoft focuses primarily on selling to hosting providers, usually leading with its Plesk hosting management tool.  Relatively little of SWsoft’s revenue comes from sales to enterprise IT users.
Virtuozzo
SWsoft’s Virtuozzo product provides a completely different type of virtualization than found in our products.  Unlike VMware products that virtualize a complete x86 system from the motherboard up, Virtuozzo virtualizes at the operating system.  Each of their “virtual environments” is a partition of the host OS that behaves like an independent system.  Because a single OS kernel runs across all virtual environments, Virtuozzo requires less disk space and memory than the hardware-level system virtualization in VMware products.  Virtuozzo is priced at about $1,000 per CPU and support fees are relatively high.  Virtuozzo is available in Linux and Windows versions.  SWsoft also provides an open source version of their technology called OpenVZ.  OpenVZ has a subset of the Virtuozzo feature set.
Strengths
•        Lightweight virtual machines use less disk and memory compared to VMware VMs.
•        Good I/O performance because device drivers are not virtualized
•        No need for guest OS installs in each VM
•        VMs can have different installed applications
•        Kernel patches and service packs installed on host apply to all VMs
•        Good success selling to hosting providers
•        SWsoft offers rental/subscription sales model that appeals to hosting providers
Weaknesses
•        SWsoft lacks enterprise software sales experience
•        $300 per user pricing for Virtuozzo Management Console
•        Not possible to run heterogeneous guests – all VMs run same OS kernel as host
•        Poorly suited to mixed dev/test and production environments
•        No true live migration – Windows VMs must be rebooted after transfer, VM data storage is copied so migrations are slow and must be planned in advance
•        Only Windows Server 2003 VMs supported on Windows version
•        Unreliable CPU resource shares
•        Uniprocessor VMs only
•        Small support staff, no training or PSO staff
•        Use of single Windows license across multiple VMs violates Microsoft license terms – customers risk fines if Microsoft challenges them
•        Virtual machine isolation much less secure than with VMware-style hardware level virtualization
•        Can’t mix 32- and 64-bit hosts and guests
•        No host or guest clustering support
•        Very few enterprise IT reference customers
Possible Announcements
•        GA or beta release of Virtuozzo Version 4 with support for VMs with different Windows service packs on same host, bridged networking, revised pricing, management of VMware VMs
•        Enterprise IT reference customer announcements
•        Reseller/distributor agreements
VMware Messages
Virtuozzo is an entirely different class of virtualization technology from that offered by VMware.  Virtuozzo’s OS-level virtualization is best suited for completely homogeneous hosting environments where it’s acceptable to restrict guest OS flexibility.  Most enterprise datacenters don’t have that luxury – they must support multiple OS kernels and service packs as required by their business users and application providers.  Only hardware-level virtualization, such as that found in VI3 provides the flexibility to mix guests OSes.  Hardware-level virtualization also offers stronger isolation between VMs, which should be a concern to users of hosted virtual servers.  Virtuozzo’s OS-level virtualization lacks true live migration support and virtual machines can be restored only on hosts with the same OS kernel and the same VM template installed – VMware VMs are completely platform-independent and can be relocated much more easily.

原来“超级版主”也转帖别人的资料啊？
哈哈。

其实vmware，我估计别的他都不怕，就怕微软。

别的产品，其实都还很不成熟，

引用:

原帖由 yybb118 于 2007-7-11 10:24 发表
原来“超级版主”也转帖别人的资料啊？
哈哈。

没看到网上谁发过. 就是你小子发我的. 出事也找你

[ 本帖最后由 lszlwy 于 2007-7-11 13:35 编辑 ]